Challenge the Brief

Are your team really interrogating briefs, or are they just taking them at face value?

Because the difference between a yes agency and a transformative one isn't capability. It's the willingness to pause before agreeing to a piece of work.

Your job isn't to simply deliver what the client asked for. It's to make sure what they've asked for will actually solve the problem they're facing.

And that starts with challenging the brief.

There are a few reasons this matters more than you think.

1. It helps you qualify work in or out

Plenty of briefs are really just fishing expeditions for an indicative price. If you don't pause to question what's behind the request, you can easily burn hours building a thoughtful proposal for something that was never properly scoped or never truly needed in the first place.

2. It forces you to understand what's really driving the work

Not the surface-level deliverable, but the pressure underneath it. The internal challenge. The thing that's making this project feel urgent now. And crucially, how it affects the person sitting across from you, because that context changes everything about how you approach the solution.

Better questions to ask

This comes down to asking better questions, for yourself, and for them:

• What's prompted this project in the first place?
• Have you tried something similar before, and how did it actually perform?
• What does success look like… not just for the business, but for you personally?
• What happens if this doesn't work?

It's also worth noting that you don't always need a perfectly polished, physical brief from a client.

Some of the best briefs are built collaboratively, through a focused briefing call where you guide the conversation, capture what matters, and fill in the gaps in real time. The key is documenting it properly and sending it back for sign-off so everyone is aligned on the why, not just the what.

A caveat

With long-standing clients, especially those who know you well, there's often an unspoken expectation that they don't need to spell everything out. And that can be a sign of trust.

But even then, understanding where the desire for the project came from, and what success looks like this time, is still essential. Context changes. Pressures shift. Assumptions expire.

Challenging a brief isn't about being difficult. It's about being responsible.

Because the work only works when the brief does.

Jo x